


The Sum of All Natural Numbers

by glassfrog



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Arguing, Bipolar Newton Geiszler, But also, Crying During Sex, Dysfunctional Relationships, First Time, Gentle Sex, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multiple Orgasms, Overstimulation, Porn with Feelings, Post-Drift (Pacific Rim), Pre-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2020-01-01 07:50:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18331760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glassfrog/pseuds/glassfrog
Summary: Late at night and far away from the rest of the world, Hermann and Newt talk, and sleep together for the first time.





	The Sum of All Natural Numbers

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: This story contains mentions of self destructive behaviour including self harm, and implied child abuse/neglect and homophobia.
> 
> Anyway here's Newt getting fucked until he speaks gibberish.

In the hours after the war clock was stopped, the undercurrent of sadness that spread throughout the Hong Kong Shatterdome was drowned out with music, bitter wine, optimistic conversation and the jeers of young men celebrating bachelorhood for the first time. In k-science, Hermann was cleaning his side of the lab. He had allowed himself to be talked into two double whiskeys before hastily excusing himself to consume a vast amount of water straight from the tap in a nearby bathroom, as he was not a regular drinker and was anxious about the effects of mixing liquor with prescription painkillers. He was also generally unbalanced by large gatherings, and could only graciously accept the good company of some three dozen rowdy men and women for so long before feeling himself turning irritable. There was something discomforting about celebrating in the Shatterdome. Like having a party in a graveyard.

A half-empty cup of tea sat stagnant on his desk on top of a hastily scribbled hypothesis he no longer had any use for. He had brewed it two days earlier, shortly before a brief conversation with Stacker Pentecost about the logistics of his plan for closing the breach. It all seemed such a long way away now. Every normal thing he had done before the chaos of the past few days seemed to have taken place an impossibly long time ago, like a hazy childhood memory sometimes mistaken for a dream. Time had dilated for Hermann beyond comprehension. The last time he ironed his underwear was six days ago. The last time he read a chapter of the book he was working through ( _Save Me The Waltz_ by Zelda Fitzgerald, which he had picked up on a sudden whim to indulge his fondness for modern history) could have been a year ago. The last time he showered…

Hermann couldn’t remember the last time he showered.

A thin layer of dust had settled on the surface of the tea he had made two days ago. He poured it down the sink.

Newton was sleeping on the lumpy couch at the lower part of the lab, away from both of their working areas. Hermann had left him a while earlier in the mess hall, drinking from a bottle of peach schnapps and throwing his arms about until he fell asleep with his cheek squashed against the shoulder of the unlucky woman seated beside him, and had to be carried like a child back upstairs by a sympathetic cadet.

Hermann took the patchwork throw that was draped across the back of the sofa and placed it over Newt, folding it gently under his chin. Newt stirred and he leapt back, flushing as if he’d been caught doing something scandalous.

“Hermann,” Newt said. “Hi.”

“You look horrendous.”

“So do you.” He looked around. “How did I get here?”

“Somebody brought you in.”

“Did you do this?” Newt flapped the corner of the blanket.

“I did not.”

“You big sap.”

Hermann washed two mugs with cold water, rubbed away the brown splotches with a tea towel and filled the kettle halfway to the brim. He had insisted on having a proper kettle on his side of the laboratory. It was the one small luxury he had allowed himself, along with the specialty tea bags full of loose leaves for Earl Grey, English rose, apple and elderflower, peppermint and jasmine. Newt kept a big jar of instant coffee on the counter, along with a jar of white sugar that was hard and filled with brown lumps as a result of him dunking his spoon in straight from the coffee cup.

Hermann selected two lemon and ginger tea bags from the rectangular tin where he kept all his tea, separated by small cardboard squares he had cut out and labelled in blue biro, and stirred them with boiling water until it turned yellow.

“Would you like stripes or ‘energy equals milk coffee’ with the Einstein face?”

“Einstein, duh,” Newt said. He accepted the mug and took a sip. “ _Ugh.”_

“Drink it. It’ll make you feel better.”

“I feel _great._ What’re you standing there for? Sit down.”

Hermann perched on the arm of the sofa, drinking his tea.

“What time is it?” Newt asked.

“About half-past-nine”

“Is that all?”

“You’ve only been here five minutes.”

“Dude, my sense of time’s out of whack. I can’t believe just yesterday...”

“I feel the same way.”

Hermann used his cane to steer himself down onto the flat cushions of the sofa beside Newt. The biologist smelled strongly of smoke. He had discarded his jacket somewhere in the Shatterdome, and his white shirt underneath was singed at the front and stained with sweat under both arms. One of the lenses in his glasses was cracked from side to side, meeting in a white star in the middle. Hermann probably looked no better.

“Where will you go?” Newt asked.

“Germany, or what’s left of it. I’ve been putting off seeing my family for far too long. Without the constant threat of impending doom looming over our heads we’ll have all the time in the world to scream at each other over the nut roast. I dare say my father won’t be happy to see me.”

“Ah, the esteemed Lars Gottlieb.”

“ _Doctor_ Lars Gottlieb,” Hermann corrected. “I’m afraid the majority of my family thinks me rather mad. It must be because of my rebellious nature. What about you?”

“My dad wants to see me, and my uncle. Monica, too. She called me, you know, being all _mommy_ with me, which was weird. Not that she's a bad mom, but she's never – she's more like a friend, you know?” Newt swallowed another mouthful of ginger tea in a rare gesture of politeness, pulled a face and balanced his mug on his knee. “Y’know,” he said, poignantly, “we've been here so long, I don't really have anything to go back to. This is my home.”

“I wonder what they'll do with the old place.”

“They’ll keep it on as a hangar for the jaegers. Every major arms manufacturer on the planet is probably scrambling for shares as we speak. Rich jaeger enthusiasts pouring cash into political campaigns - how long do you think it’ll be before they’re legally classed as a firearm in America? They’ll write it into the Constitution - the right to board jaegers. Little jaegers for kids with cute little rubber bullets instead of real ones. Think about it for a second! We've created the world's _coolest_ killing machines. And we've got no one left to use them on but each other.”

“I would never allow it. I’d have them melted down for scrap first.”

“Ah-ah-ah, Hermann! What makes you think you'll have any choice?”

“They're still my designs. My code. Even the most advanced Mark-5 model finds its fundamentals in my work - _years_ of sleepless nights. I think I've garnered some respect amongst our superiors during our time in the Jaeger Programme, unlike _you_ with your terrible tattoos, twenty-minute guitar solos blasting all hours, your endless chatter, _complete_ inability to read a room…”

Newton was smirking behind the rim of his mug.

“You just can't help yourself can you?” Hermann said.

“You love it.”

He pulled his knees up and put his dirty boots on the couch. Hermann hardly blamed him for being preoccupied with thoughts of what would become of Gypsy Danger and the other Jaegers. They had been transferred to his head long before the drift during the passionate discussions about the ethics of alien warfare that had occupied their early conversations well into the night time. It had been Hermann who first confessed his apprehension, in the earliest, best and brightest days of the Jaeger Programme, that they might put an end to the kaiju only to enable far greater evil to advance within humanity’s own ranks. But that was years ago, before fears of a brave new world forged by gunfire were replaced with fears that his family would die next; his older sister Karla who, despite her manner, had provided solace in his darkest moments in his Shatterdome quarters, his brother Bastien who was expecting his first child that summer. Fears that he would die next, when he had accomplished so little, and would leave behind so very few to mourn him. History books published long after he had died would hail him an unlikely hero or otherwise condemn him as either a romanticist or a narrow, calculating engineer who set in motion the grinding gears of a desolate future.

The kaiju body parts that littered Newton's side of the lab, the guts and gizzards that covered stainless steel plates on tables and hung suspended in jars of liquid would be shipped off to universities and museums of science, otherwise wither and die. In ten short years Newton had become the world’s leading expert on kaiju biology, and now, thanks to Raleigh and Mako, the noble sacrifices of Pentecost and Chuck Hansen, who was just 21-years-old, the Wei Tangs and the Kaidanovskys, Hermann’s insomnia and his own mad brilliance, he would never be surpassed.

“Perhaps I’ll go into politics,” Hermann said, and looked at Newt when he did not reply.

His face and glasses were bathed in the fluorescent lights of the lab that shone yellow through the kaiju brain tank in front of him. He looked like he was looking somewhere far away. "We're going to be OK, aren’t we?" he said.

Hermann’s hand, the one he didn’t use to grip the end of his cane, moved off his lap and grabbed Newt’s on the worn-out fuzz of the sofa between them. Newt laid his head on Hermann’s shoulder. It was a familiar sort of touching that was surprisingly easy to slide into, spurred on by the lingering echoes of the drift still sparking between them. Hermann would not have normally attempted it.

“Everything changes,” he said. It was the best he could manage, given the circumstances. Newton seemed mildly amused by this, and cleaned the one good lens of his glasses on his grubby shirt.

“You’re gonna miss me, Hermann,” he said.

Hooking one arm over the back of the couch, he looked at Hermann knowingly, leaned in and kissed him. It was a timid, dry-lipped kiss. His mostly-empty mug slid off his knee and landed on its side between them, leaking lukewarm tea all over the couch.

“Oops,” Newt said in a high-pitched voice. “My bad.”

He removed his elbow from where he had tucked it into the crevice between the cushions and the hard back of the couch and set the now-empty Einstein mug down on the floor. Hermann drank the last of his tea. By the time he had finished the moment had passed and Newt had begun pulling threads in a gash in his shirt. Their shoulders, the sides of their arms and legs were still touching as they continued to sit in silence. Newton was always unseasonably warm and seemed to carry several inches of hot air around him no matter the weather. His face, now, looked uncomfortably hot, cheeks blotched bright red with an uneven flush that spread to the roots of his hair.

“Oh to hell with it,” Hermann said, grabbed Newt and kissed him back. When he pulled away, Newton was staring at him so wildly Hermann could see the whites of his eyes all round the dark blue rings that framed his distinctive irises.

It was Hermann’s turn to blush.

“Forgive me, that was... impulsive.”

“I like that.”

“I-I see,” he said. He let go of Newt’s shirt and gave his chest an awkward pat, smoothing down his shirt which was crumpled beyond redemption.

The third time they kissed - for it was only the third time, despite everything - was more tentative. Neither one nor the other initiated it, rather they were drawn together imperceptibly by the remains of the drift still sparking between them, until Hermann discovered he was kissing Newt at the exact same time Newt was kissing him. Newt’s spilled tea was seeping into the left leg of his trousers. The people they had left behind in the mess hall, filled with jubilation and sorrow, felt further away than they had ever been.

Newt was a messy kisser, half missing Hermann’s mouth with an overeager tongue and nipping teeth. Emboldened, he clambered onto his knees and began to push Hermann down on the couch as Hermann urged him closer, kissing his neck and the scruff on his chin even as the ever-whirring logical part of his mind screamed at him to stop. The lingering connection between them was still too raw, mingled with adrenaline and loss and ten years of pent-up, complicated feelings, and there was need to grasp it, to transform it into something physical and real.

“You don’t have to,” Newt said breathlessly, slightly late as he laid on top of Hermann with his legs either side of his waist.

“I want to.”

Newt started sucking Hermann’s ear lobe at the same time as he began unbuttoning his shirt. Hermann felt exposed with the prominent slope of his collarbones on show.

“Someone could see us,” he said.

He intended it as a warning, but Newton, who was never able to take a hint, said “Come to my room?”, and Hermann, who had a lifetime’s experience in self denial, inexplicably answered: “OK.”

It was a short walk from the lab to the science department’s quarters, filled with empty rooms that had once accommodated more than forty esteemed scientists, none of whom could bear to remain in the company of either Dr Geiszler nor Gottlieb for too long, and had become disillusioned with their work and instead dedicated their efforts to the Wall of Life - a fact that had prompted Lars Gottlieb’s first and only correspondence to his son in more than five years. It was not returned.

Hermann’s shoulders turned high and stiff as they approached Newt’s room, past several large lockers that Newton had claimed as his own and filled with paperwork and old biology equipment, old cassette tapes of monster movies long out of circulation and bootleg merchandise with incorrectly-spelled slogans that he had a weakness for. Newt’s hand, wrapped tightly in his, had begun to sweat profusely. When they arrived at the door of his room, indistinguishable from the rest except for a number, he wiped his palm on his shirt. It left a greasy stain behind.

“Five minutes,” he said, and dashed inside. Hermann could hear him tidying up in a frenzy, slamming drawers and cupboards closed and kicking things under his bed.

“Dude, a little privacy!” he yelped when Hermann walked in.

“At this point, Newton, nothing you have in here could shock me.”

Newt stuffed an armful of clothes into the top drawer of a desk that was made for papers and files and tried to force it shut, eventually turning around and used the full weight of his body to jam it closed. He ran into the tiny bathroom, leaving Herman feeling awkward and out of place in the middle of his bedroom.

Like all personal quarters appointed to Shatterdome personnel, the room was small and windowless, though as the last two remaining scientists in a dwindling workforce they had been allowed better accommodation than the cadets, who had to strip naked each morning and make use of a large communal shower. As a former boarding schoolboy, the very thought made Hermann shudder.

Newt had action figurines on his bookshelf and rows of small plastic kaiju, none of which had ever existed in real life, that had once come free in packs of sugary cereal and had since become a collectors item, or so Hermann had been told, had Newton not ripped up the sealed packages they came in and thrown them away. He had posters on his walls of old slasher movies and punk and rock’n’roll bands, some that Hermann recognised but most that he did not. He shuffled his feet around the cluttered floor, and pushed around with his cane the open sketchbooks and odd socks and notes half written in a mania-fuelled blur. Newt’s passion for his work evidenced itself in ways drastically different to Hermann’s. He was tempestuous and prone to outbursts, which were occasionally self-destructive and emerged whenever the feeling took him, be it cooped up in his small room in the wee hours of the morning or in front of the discerning eyes of their superiors. Hermann’s own intense emotions were kept firmly under wraps, manifesting in late nights, muscle spasms, and the odd, brief break-down carried out quietly in the privacy of his quarters, and never for very long.

Newt emerged from the bathroom with steamed-up glasses and boxer shorts low on his hips and put his arms around Hermann’s waist. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s a mess. Are you OK?”

“I’d like to wash too.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I ate onions today.”

“Is that what that is?”

Hermann broke away from him and went into the bathroom, hands fumbling with the lock behind him. He took a long drink of lukewarm water straight from the tap. He considered whether sleeping with Newton was simply the logical culmination of their decade-long relationship. Furthermore, he thought about how he had no condoms on his person nor in his room. In truth he had not needed them. Both his earliest and most recent memories of sex comprised of awkward fumbling in empty university corridors long after the student body had left for the day and lecturers had taken refuge behind locked office doors. He would say, when speaking to a doctor in the privacy of a sterile office with a plastic skeleton looking on, that he had been sexually active in his youth several times from the age of sixteen, that he had done so safely, to the best of his knowledge, no he was not in a relationship, and no he did not require any additional medication for the erectile dysfunction he had so very clinically described. The fundamentals of sexuality were preferable to the tangible realities where Hermann could not hide behind complicated equations and thick woollen sweaters. He gave himself away every time he slipped under the sheets of another boy, touching and being touched in ways that sent electric shocks through his body.

Some romances were meant for the hazy days between July and early September, when the sun lingered low in the red sky until late and two friends could sit barefoot on the veranda of holiday homes on the coast of Devon and drink strawberry cider that turned their lips pink and sweet-tasting. Hermann would throw away the scribbled love notes passed in Geometry class, tuck in his shirt, straighten his tie, and try not to be hurt when eyes that once looked warmly into his skittered away from his gaze and pretended not to notice when bigger boys kicked his cane.

To love briefly, he had theorised as he urinated for the third time in an hour, was simply the most realistic form of love he could expect. A shy brush of hands, a kiss that turned into more. In a very sensible, scientific way, the deeply unlovable child who had grown into a man who craved love nonetheless learned to cherish the little he was allowed, and locked those moments away in the tiny pockets of his heart never to be touched or spoken of again.

Newt had left the crumpled plastic bottle open and half full on top of the toilet tank. Hermann flicked the lid over the nozzle and put it inside the small cupboard behind the mirror over the sink. Several empty packets of Ibuprofen fell on his face when he opened it. He found a packet of disposable toothbrushes and used one. Newt squeezed his toothpaste from the top of the tube instead of the bottom, like he should.

Showering was a challenge for Hermann, and Newt’s shower did not have the benefit of the accommodations he was used to. In the early days, when his body had barely begun to betray him with migraines, vertigo, muscle spasms and sleepless nights, some part of him believed that with his indomitable mind he could something think himself out of his disability, but this had quickly proven to be deeply unscientific. As he entered his thirties he felt less inclined to injure himself to adapt to the world around him and began to make demands more freely. Properly worded requests for handicap grips and raised sockets for electronic devices were submitted and processed in due course, and while such minor additions were not always required, Hermann appreciated them on the days that they were. He greatly admired Stephen Hawking, Ralph Braun, Gustav Kirchhoff and John Forbes Nash Jr.

He cleared a spot next to the sink, removed his clothes and folded them into a neat little pile. He turned the water on the shower to cold and began counting down from one-hundred-and-twenty. It was a routine he had followed religiously since arriving in Hong Kong to avoid over-exerting himself. A hot shower at an inopportune time could bring on an exhaustion that sat so heavily on his shoulders that his back would stoop and pain would split his skull like a lightning bolt from forehead to spine for the rest of the day.

He uncapped a half empty bottle of shower gel that Newton had left on the side and used it quickly. It smelled like Newt, but cleaner, without the layers of grime, perspiration, kaiju blood and whatever he had managed to spill on himself that day.

Reaching the end of his countdown, he turned off the shower and took a towel from where Newton had placed them over a rail at the end of the tub. Newton had two towels, one bright green and the other rainbow tie-dye, though the towels that had been provided by the PPDC upon their arrival had been plain white.

He groped for his cane and breathed deeply as he leaned his full weight upon it. The bathroom mirror was streaked where Newt had obviously wiped it with his palm after stepping out of the shower. Hermann caught a glimpse of himself, hunched over and pink as a prawn. He put his clothes back on, buttoned his shirt to the top, and put his sweater vest on over that. He thought about turning the tap on the shower back to hot, but decided not to.

When he left bathroom, he found Newt had put most of his clothes back on too, though he had turned off the large glaring light in the middle of the ceiling and switched on a bedside reading lamp in its place. He was sitting on the bed picking at a piece of string he’d tied into a bracelet and gotten stuck on his wrist. Hermann placed his cane against the bedside cabinet and sat stiffly beside him. Newt glanced at him for a moment then put the string bracelet in his mouth and started gnawing at it. Hermann took him by the wrist, untied the string by twisting one fraying end until it was thin enough to push through the loop of the knot, and slowly lowered Newt’s hand into his lap, where he held it in both of his.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Newt said. “We... _are_ doing this, right?”

“We don’t have to do anything, if you don’t want to,” Hermann said. “We could just sit here and hold hands. I won’t begrudge you if you don’t want to take this any further. We could simply talk.”

“I don’t want to talk,” Newt said. Gingerly, he pushed Hermann down on the bed. The bloodstains on his forehead had been scrubbed away, along with the black scab that had covered the gash above his eyebrow, making it look fresh and raw. Hermann traced over it.

“You could’ve been killed,” he said.

“Look where it got me. I should get a gun pointed at my head more often.”

“A _gun?_ Good Lord.”

“Did I forget to mention that?”

“You’re impossible. You terrify me.” Hermann drew him into another kiss. He _wanted_ him, had wanted him since before the Jaeger Academy, when he sent letters that always seemed to be covered in chalk dust, typed out on an old-fashioned typewriter and sealed with wax inside ivory-coloured envelopes. Newt was thinner then, with chubbier cheeks and leftover teenage acne scattered across his chin. Hermann had been standing lopsided for around two years and was beginning to develop a hunch. What had begun as an intellectual attraction had developed into something physical, much to Hermann’s later embarrassment as he often regarded the short, sweaty, screeching man who perpetually offended with his tasteless tattoos and wild gesturing, who left coffee stains on Hermann’s desk. Who had once driven the esteemed mathematician into such a blind rage that he had concluded his day braced against the grey wall of his room with his trousers around his knees, stroking himself furiously while imagining Newt bent helpless over his knee, jeans pushed down and bare buttocks spanked bright red, eyes as wide as saucers and hands clamped over his mouth as he came humiliatingly onto Hermann’s thigh (though it was the thought of him afterwards, crimson-faced and dewy-eyed, humbled and embarrassed for having enjoyed it, that brought Hermann to his most intense orgasm in nearly a year).

“Are you still drunk?” Newt asked.

“A little, I think,” Hermann replied.

Newt was fumbling with the belt of his too-big trousers and shoving his hand down the front of his underwear.

“You OK?” he said breathlessly. “You’re not-”

“I have been known to - to take a while,” said Hermann, bristling with embarrassment. He had been offered pills, in the past, to be taken reliably three hours before sexual intercourse, along with the plethora of other steroids and capsules for muscle spasms, high blood pressure and depression he kept in a plastic pill box with times and dates scribbled on in black marker. That was in 2019, the Jaeger Programme was riding high on its early successes, and Hermann had long since resigned himself to at least temporary celibacy. “It isn’t you,” he said.

The corners of Newton’s mouth quirked into a small smile as he clambered on top of him, yanked his pants open and mouthed his soft dick through the fabric of his underwear.

“Newton - _oh,_ please.” He ran his fingers through Newt’s damp hair before cupping his hand under his chin and urging him up into a small kiss. “Let me undress you.”

Newt climbed onto his lap and sat back with one hand braced against Hermann’s knee. With nervous hands Hermann stroked up his torso, sliding his shirt down to his elbows, exposing fully the multi-coloured canvas that was his body. Six beaded kaiju eyes dotted in an upside-down v-shape to the middle of his chest, green horns crept up to his collarbone, and a background of red dusk swirled around each hard nipple. Hermann swallowed. One of the first pictures Newt had sent him (on Hermann’s request, though he’d later deny it) had revealed, just slightly, a sliver of one of those nipples, small and red as a raspberry over the hanging neckline of his black T-shirt. His hair had looked greasy under the fluorescent light bulb in the back room of a run-down Cambridge rock’n’roll bar. He had a dimple in his cheek and scuffed black boots propped up on a plastic table, and the neck of his T-shirt had slipped so low on his chest that Hermann had wondered whether he had done it on purpose.

“ _Ow!_ ” Newt said. “Dude! Did you just bite me?”

Hermann murmured an apology against the hard bud of his nipple and dragged his tongue across the tender flesh before taking it between his fingers and tugging and tweaking until Newt’s breathing turned quick and laboured. He began to frantically unbutton his jeans. “Touch me here too.”

Hermann pushed the jeans down at the back, cupped his ass with both hands and squeezed until Newt whined against his mouth.

“That’s gonna leave a bruise.”

“Take these off.”

“You’re so bossy.” Newt grinned, squirming out of his jeans and kicking them onto the floor. Hermann reached up to take his glasses off, and he ducked out of the way. “I want to see you,” he said.

“I’m not much to look at.”

“Haven’t you heard? I’m _totally_ into nerdy professor-types who dress like somebody’s great aunt Gladys. C’mon, show me. Ow!”

Hermann pinched his inner thigh then squeezed it gently, stroking upwards until he reached the prominent outline of Newt’s erection and slipped his fingers further between his legs, so that he was touching the hot, sensitive stripe of skin leading to his hole.

“Do you have condoms?” Hermann asked.

“I love it when you talk dirty,” Newt replied.

“I didn’t exactly make arrangements for this.”

“It’s fine, I’ve got it.”

He fumbled around in the top drawer of his bedside cabinet for the small plastic packets, which he dumped next to the reading lamp and a crinkled package of tissues. They were approaching their use-by date, though he had fucked and been fucked drunkenly in the past, and allowed himself to be bent over in places and by people he nearly didn’t like.

Exposed and pimpling with only his tattoos to cover him in the stale Shatterdome air, that was always too cold ever since the space heater he’d been hauling around since his university days broke, Newt felt self-conscious and began to coax Hermann out of his own clothes. He felt a giddy surge of power mixed with a strong whiff of sulphur as Hermann lifted his arms to allow Newt to strip him of his ruined sweater-vest. The mathematician seemed to exist so completely within his clothes. Plaid sweatshirts and ill-fitting trousers that always ended an inch above where they should on his ankles, showing off unattractive ankle socks that he pulled up all the way, and shirts ironed razor-sharp and buttoned up to the last hole. Newt felt like he was unshelling him with each plastic button he popped open, exposing the white plane of his chest.

“Oh wow,” he murmured.

Hermann looked wary and tried to pull his shirt closed, until Newt stroked his hands through his hair down to the nape of his neck and kissed down his neck to the jutting centre of his collarbone. Hermann was pale and wiry under his clothes, with a slight softness that came naturally with age. Newt could see his heart beating through his chest.

“Am I hurting you?” he asked.

“Not at all.”

“I feel like I’m crushing you.”

“Please, Newton, I am not a delicate flower.” He drew Newt closer and brushed his lips down his chest. “You feel very pleasant.”

“OK, Mr. Wandering Hands.”

“That’s Dr. Wandering Hands to you.”

He groped Newt’s backside as Newt pushed his shirt down on his shoulders, pausing to remove his arms from the bunched-up sleeves one after the other.

Newt’s body was soft and squeezable, with gentle curves cushioning his hips and a small layer of pudge around his waist. Hermann slipped his hands under the elastic of his underwear and pulled them down. He looked vaguely embarrassed as his cock sprung free and bounced against his stomach, wetting the dark trail of hair that curled into his navel.

“Gimme a moment.” He scrambled across to bed to feel around in the drawer for the half-empty tube of lubricant half rolled up from the bottom. His fingers brushed the black Trespasser tongue dildo among the mess of broken pens, candy bar wrappers and the bits of Rubik’s Cube he’d taken apart with an embalming knife. He shoved it to the back of the drawer before Hermann could see.

“Got it,” he said. He opened the tube of lube with his teeth, coated three of his fingers and plunged them into himself, stretching himself roughly.

“Steady now,” Hermann said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He held Newt’s wrist and stabilized him. He squeezed a few beads of lubricant onto his own fingers and followed Newt’s hand to where his fingers disappeared inside of himself. Newt gasped against Hermann’s mouth as he began to massage the rim of his hole with the pad of one finger while stroking his dick with his other hand.

“Can I…?”

“Yeah, I’m ready.”

Newt shuddered as he slid his fingers out of himself and allowed Hermann’s to breach him, pressing hard and insistent on the sensitive knot inside of him. Hermann used two fingers in place of Newt’s overambitious three, but his hands were bigger, his knuckles were more pronounced, and Newt rocked back on them with enthusiasm. “That’s it - right there…”

“I can feel your pulse,” Hermann said. He wrapped his free hand around Newt’s dick and began to stroke him in time with Newt’s own small, rhythmic movements.

Newt’s lips parted softly in a silent moan. “Little harder,” he urged. “Your hands are freezing - no, don’t stop. Finger me more… Oh, oh _fu…!”_ His eyes grew wide and he pushed Hermann’s hand away in a panic, clutching his dick as he came messily in his own palm.

“Did you…?”

“Yeah, a little bit,” he said hoarsely. Thin beads of come dripped down his fingers. He wiped them on the bed. “ _Shit._ Sorry. I swear this never happens to me. I don’t know why…”

Hermann laughed and shushed him with a wet kiss that Newt melted into and chased with swollen lips even after Hermann pulled away.

“Now I feel much less embarrassed,” he said.

“You’re such a jerk. It’s been a while, OK?”

Hermann’s fingers were still buried inside him almost to the root. Newt’s inner walls felt impossibly smooth and soft and searingly hot, quivering around his fingers with the aftershock of his unexpected orgasm. Hermann groaned and dragged his lips up Newt’s throat, lightly scraping his teeth against his racing pulse.

“Oh shit. That turned you on?” Newt said, groping Hermann’s dick through his underwear. “You’re bigger than I thought.”

“Thought about it often, did you?”

“Yeah, dude. Lemme see.”

“Alright - _alright,_ stop grabbing at me.”

“You’re still half-dressed. I feel like a slut.”

“I’m taking them off now.”

Newt scrambled out of his lap and almost fell backwards off the edge of the bed while Hermann removed the rest of his clothes.

“Don’t keep your socks on, it creeps me out,” Newt said.

“My feet get cold,” Hermann replied, taking them off anyway and folding one inside of the other. “Can we switch? I’d like to be on top of you.”

“O-OK.”

Newt settled on his back with Hermann between his legs. Hermann’s fingers brushed the singed tips of Newt’s hair on the back of his head as he rocked against him. The tip of his dick caught on the rim of Newt’s hole and half pushed inside, making Newt gasp.

“Sorry.” Hermann rearranged himself. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I want it. Just go slow, OK? I’m still sensitive. Don’t hit me or spit in my mouth or anything.”

Newt’s belly creased in the middle as he spread and lifted his legs. Hermann pushed a pillow under his hips, raising them slightly.

“Are you comfortable?”

“Y-Yeah,” Newt said. “You always do that?”

“Do what?”

“Make people comfortable, people you sleep with?”

“I can’t say I’ve put much thought to it.”

“You’re so weird.”

He grabbed Hermann’s hips and pulled him closer so that the length of his dick pressed hot and hard against the cleft of his ass. Hermann stroked away a speck of dirt that clung to the curve of Newt’s cheek, just underneath his left eye, that he had missed, and drew him into another long kiss.

“Fuck me already,” Newt said.

“I should put the condom on.”

“Want you to come in me.”

Hermann sputtered, red-faced.

“If you don’t want to…”

“No, I - I want to.” Hermann aligned his dick with Newt’s hole and pushed until it slipped and popped out of him. “Sorry.”

“Lemme help.”

Newt reached down and guided Hermann’s dick inside him, until it breached the tightest part of his hole and sunk with alarming speed into the scorching heat inside. They both gasped, and Hermann’s fists clenched until his fingernails gouged half-moon shapes into the palm of his hand.

“Your eyes are kind of bugging out,” Newt said.

“You’re squeezing me.”

“Let me get used to it.”

Newt wriggled a little, pushing down on Hermann’s dick so that it was almost fully sheathed inside of him. Hermann felt a hot pressure at the head of his dick as it brushed against the curve of Newt’s insides. He nudged forward experimentally, making Newt wince and grab his arm hard enough to hurt, hole clenching frantically an inch and a half from the base of Hermann’s dick.

“S’too big,” Newt said.

Hermann lifted his face with both hands and swept him into a deep kiss, licking and biting his lips until he flailed, grabbed him and pushed him away.

“Oh man,” he gasped. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“You’re so small.”

“What the hell?”

“You’re small inside. You’re sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah, man. It’ll fit, just… give me a second.”

He wrapped his legs around Hermann’s waist and pulled him in tight.

“ _Ouch_ \- do you mind? Stop that! You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“I don’t care.”

“ _I_ care,” Hermann said, and started to slide his dick in and out of Newt very carefully, so that the tight, slick ring of Newt’s hole never quite reached the base.

“Oh yeah,” Newt moaned like a porn star. “Harder, fuck me with your big cock…”

“Newton,” Hermann said, “you don’t have to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Pretend to moan. If you’re going to scream, I intend to _make_ you.”

Newt burst out laughing. “ _What?”_

Hermann flushed. “I was trying to be sexy,” he said indignantly.

“Stop! You’re killing me!”

Hermann jabbed him in the ribs.

“Ow! Your fingers are so bony.”

Hermann grabbed his ass with both hands and spread him apart as he thrust into him. The sudden feeling of Hermann’s dick pressing just once against the back of his insides made Newt gasp and yank a corner of bedsheet off the mattress. Hermann smiled sympathetically and adjusted the speed and depth of his movements, shallow enough to spare Newt any discomfort while rubbing the girth of his cock agonisingly up and down his prostate.

Newt’s eyes turned wide and flashed between Hermann’s face and where their bodies were connected.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he whispered.

“It’s not supposed to.”

Hermann propped one elbow up on the mattress to the side of Newt’s head and used his hand to stroke Newt’s hair, which still felt a little gritty despite his earlier dash in the shower, in time with every slow, deliberate thrust.

“Oh fuck,” Newt gasped. “It feels good.... Are you all the way in?”

“No.”

“You’re gonna wreck me.”

“Ten years of conducting outrageous experiments, elbow deep in kaiju innards and your highly irregular laboratory behaviour, I hardly think one night of lovemaking is going to finish you off.”

“Is that what this is?” A tiny smile tugged at the corner of Newt’s mouth, ready to break into a laugh to lighten the atmosphere he had inadvertently created. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve never…”

“With another man?”

“With anyone.”

“Oh Newton,” Hermann murmured, took his hand and kissed it.

Newt’s freckles disappeared under a deep blush. “Don’t make it weird.”

Hermann kissed up his wrist until he reached the sensitive inside of his elbow, where he bit and sucked until Newton’s breathing turned laboured and he whipped his arm back and covered his mouth with one hand as he looked away.

“Newton?”

“I’m OK,” Newt said. “Keep going, please.” He whined as Hermann began to stroke his dick with every measured thrust inside him. “Oh fuck, oh fuck. Why did we wait so long?” He dragged his blunt nails down Hermann’s chest, leaving ice-white trails that would soon turn red and bleed. Hermann hissed. His hand stopped on Newt’s forehead and he shuddered to a halt, dick still hard and pushed in not quite as far as it could go. Slowly, he took hold of one of Newton’s desperately clawing hands, with its bitten nails and blackened cuticles and chemical stains, and kissed it so gently that Newt couldn’t stop the tears springing to his eyes.

“I’m gonna come,” Newt choked. “For real this time.”

“Go ahead.”

“Hermann…”

“Please, I want you to,” Hermann said.

Newt’s eyes grew wide and panicked. “I-I can’t stop,” he said. “I’m gonna, I’m gonna come, oh fuck, I’m coming - I’m coming _again!”_

Hermann felt the sudden gush of semen hit his hand, followed by two more weak spurts that dripped between his fingers. He grabbed a tissue from the packet on the bedside table and wiped his palm with it until it was soaked and unusable. Newt hiccuped and twitched around his dick. Bracing his feet on the mattress, he lifted himself awkwardly up and down until Hermann stilled him with a hand on his hip, lowered him onto the bed and pulled out of him so slowly that his whole body shuddered and tried to cling to the head of Hermann’s dick as it left him.

Hermann curled his hand in Newt’s hair.

“I had thought about this,” he said. “About you.”

Newt’s lower lip quivered. He blinked, and the tears that were swimming in his eyes spilled onto his cheeks. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I just…” He wiped his eyes. “I had a really crazy day,” he said, laughing and crying at the same time.

“Shh,” Hermann said, stroking Newt’s cheek. “It’s alright. Come here.” He laid down gracelessly beside him and pulled him against his chest.

“You didn’t finish,” Newt said.

“That’s alright.”

“I want you to.”

“I’m fine - you don’t need to,” Hermann said, but Newt was already grappling him, pushing him down on the mattress and swinging one leg over him.

“Don’t you want to?” he said.

“I-I can’t yet. I’m sorry...”

Newt pressed a finger to Hermann’s lips. “Shh. Let me take care of you.” He settled on top of him, taking all his weight on his knees as his warm inner thighs pressed into either side of Hermann’s waist, in the small curves between where his rib cage ended and his sharp hips began. Reaching behind, he guided the blunt head of Hermann’s dick inside him and sank down with a sigh.

“M’too loose,” he muttered.

Hermann reached up and wiped away a traitorous tear that was still clung to the lower lashes of Newt’s left eye with the tip of his thumb. “You really don’t have to do this,” he said.

“Can you not…?”

“I can. I think I can.”

“Then I wanna do it.”

“It may not be easy.”

"Pretty sure I can handle it," Newt said, stomach jiggling pleasantly as he bounced on Hermann’s dick. Hermann squeezed his chest with both hands so that his nipples poked out pink and hard. He circled them with the pads of his thumbs, pinched and slowly pulled until Newt arched his back and clenched around him.

“Keep going,” Hermann urged. He opened his fingers abruptly, causing Newt’s chest to bounce and making his body flinch.

“Quit it,” Newt said. “Lemme do this. Stop smirking.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re trying to get me hard again.”

“Am I succeeding?”

“Uh-huh… stop playing with them. Wanna make you feel good…”

“I feel good watching you.”

He pressed both Newt’s nipples - one with his thumb, the other with his index finger - and squeezed the small swell of his chest so that it creased plumply in the middle.

“Mm, don’t do that,” Newt moaned as he leaned into the touch, spreading his legs wider, exposing his rapidly hardening cock. Hermann touched him like he was a drowning man and Newt was his oxygen, taking advantage of Newt’s prone position to tweak and tease his body until he could no longer keep a steady pace, and went rigid and tense on Hermann’s dick, watching with red cheeks as his nipples were plucked and his belly and sensitive inner thighs squeezed. Newt felt vulnerable, shivering atop his lab partner of ten years, being observed and examined like a distant galaxy brought within a hair’s breadth through the lense of a telescope. As if the man who would not see the stars he had watched fervently as a boy through a circular window at the peak of the Gottlieb family home in Bavaria had somehow found them instead in the soft folds of Newt’s body, the dim artificial light on his skin and the constellations between each sandy freckle.

Newt seized as Hermann wrapped his fingers around his hypersensitive dick and stroked him slowly and deliberately until his moans became louder, high-pitched and urgent.

“Does it really feel that good?” Hermann asked, with a twinge of amusement.

“Whuh?”

“Your tongue is hanging out.”

Newt closed his mouth. Hermann’s smile softened and crinkled the corners of his eyes. He reached up to stroke Newt’s indignant face. “Is it too much?”

“No. I-I can take it.”

Hermann squeezed the head of his cock and rubbed it with his thumb until a drop of pre-come beaded at the tip and spilled onto his fingers. Newt’s soft thighs quivered around his hips. Wildly, Hermann wondered how he had ever thought he could be satisfied with the dimple in his cheek and the sliver of his right nipple captured in a grainy photograph.

“Hermann,” Newt squeaked. “You’re gonna make me come.”

“I’m trying to.”

“Don’t wanna… don’t wanna… before you…”

“Then shut up and start moving.”

Newt all but wailed, enthused by the sudden scornfulness of Hermann’s words combined with the feeling of his big hands placed possessively on his hips. His pace turned shallow and erratic as he rocked back and forth on Hermann’s dick. Reaching up, Hermann pinched one of his nipples and pulled it until he slid almost completely off his dick and held him there, moaning and squirming and squeezing around the tip.

“Are you gonna?” he gasped. “Are you gonna?”

“Not yet. Please, just a little longer.”

“I can’t, I can’t…”

Hermann placed a soothing hand under one of Newt’s thighs and urged him upwards so that his dick slipped out of him, dragging with it a slick string of lube that dripped onto his stomach. Newt whined loudly and pushed back on Hermann’s hands. The words _ask nicely_ leapt to Hermann’s tongue and fizzled out before he could say them at the thought of Newton, with all his pride, opening his legs and _begging_ for cock.

“Why’d you stop?” Newt panted. “Hermann?”

“Y-Yes?”

“You OK?”

“I’m fine.”

“Your ears are bright red.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

He sheathed his dick in another layer of lube before guiding it back inside Newt and using the soft handfuls of his hips to yank him back down.

“Not so deep!” Newt begged. “It’s too big - don’t, _don’t!_ Let me do it!”

“Alright.” Hermann laid very still as Newt shuffled about on top of him, spreading his legs further apart, which allowed him to sink down until Hermann could feel the pressure building at the tip of his dick as it connected with the hot part inside of him that slowly, surely opened up for him. Hermann held his breath. His fingers dug deep grooves into Newt’s lower back.

Newt looked down at him triumphantly.

“Told you I could take it,” he said, with tears in his eyes.

“I warned you you’d hurt yourself.”

Newt began to move up and down on Hermann’s dick, slower and more deliberately than before, wincing with every thrust hitting the deepest, most vulnerable part of him. His hands held Hermann’s waist on both sides.

“S’that feel good?” he asked.

“Yes,” Hermann breathed. “Oh, yes.”

Newt grew braver, and began to pick up his pace.

“Easy now,” Hermann said. He grasped Newt’s flagging erection and stroked it clumsily back to life.

“Oh fuck. Keep doing that.”

Hermann did, watching him intensely until Newt, overwhelmed, grabbed his wrist and tried to push his hand away. Hermann held fast in response, squeezing the base and stroking firmly.

“Oh my go - OOOH! _Stooop!”_

“I don’t think you really mean that, Newton,” Hermann remarked as Newt fucked himself desperately up and down.

“It’s good, ish good, I’m gonna - ghk! _Aa_ _hh!”_

Hermann released his dick and watched with some amusement as Newt’s hands immediately flew to replace them. Gripping his hips and holding him in place, he bucked upwards and ground into him, drawing a choke from Newt’s throat along with a thread of drool that slid down the blushing pink swell of his lower lip.

“ _Please,”_ he said, voice frantic and thick with tears. “It’s too much, I can’t - I’m gonna come, I’m going to - _oh, oh no, OH-”_ Once he started he couldn’t stop, and he cried out loudly over and over, jerking off and fucking himself desperately on Hermann’s dick until Hermann took his hand from his cheek and put his fingers inside his mouth, dragging his thumb over the tip of his tongue and pinching it gently. Newt’s body seized and he began to shake uncontrollably, dick hard and bouncing against his stomach as he came helpless and dry. Trembling, he waited for Hermann to release his tongue before collapsing onto his chest, a frenzied wail escaping from his lips as the head of Hermann’s dick tugged on his rim before popping out of him.

The sudden loss of heat and the lick of cold air engulfing his wet shaft made Hermann gasp. He wiped a lock of sweat-soaked hair from Newt’s forehead and kissed him.

“I’m almost there, darling,” he whispered. “I need you to come once more for me. Can you do that?”

“Noooo…”

“Shhh. You’re doing so well.”

“You’re gonna kill me. How are you still hard? _Mmn…”_

“How are you holding up?”

“I’m loose… I-I’m not-”

Hermann cupped Newt’s face in both hands and tilted his head up. “You’re perfect,” he said.

Newt butted his head against Hermann’s hand. “Don’t try to butter me up. I can’t even clench.”

“Can you come for me, Newton?”

Newt’s lower lip trembled. “I’ll try.”

With two fingers, Hermann brushed the swollen rim of Newt’s hole, feeling the way their bodies were connected. Newt shuddered as one of his digits entered him and pushed in so that the first knuckle pressed snugly against the hard shaft of his dick. Hermann gave a pause before pressing deeper, seeking out his prostate. Newt’s body leapt and he tried instinctively to escape the intense, white-hot feeling of being stretched beyond what was comfortable. Hermann wrapped his free arm firmly around his waist and held him down until he relaxed, and stopped trying to clench his hole frantically around the combined girth of Hermann’s dick and his finger despite being loose and sloppy and leaking with lube.

Slowly, Hermann released his waist and moved his hand to stroke Newt’s hair and tuck his head into the slope of his neck. Newt’s breath was coming out ragged and hot.

“There now,” Hermann said, fingering him gently. “I’ve got you.”

He added another finger and tugged upwards on Newt’s hole until he sobbed and lifted his hips obediently, sliding off Hermann’s dick almost completely, before allowing himself to be pushed back down. His body felt warm and pliant as dough under Hermann’s hands. His dick was flushed and sensitive, wet at the tip and sticky with come and rubbing against his stomach as Hermann guided him up and down, alternating between squeezing his ass and pulling with hard, insistent fingers that stirred up his insides and made his eyes roll back in his head.

“It’sh sho _gooood,”_ Newt sobbed as he drooled on Hermann’s chest.

“Now now.”

Using his fingers, Hermann picked up his pace, eliciting a frantic wail from Newt as he was forced to rock his hips back and forth, the feeling of Hermann’s dick brushing against his prostate coming harder and faster and more intense than before. His breathing quickened and hiccuped in the back of his throat as his body tensed, on the edge of another small, embarrassing orgasm.

“Please, _pleashe,_ do whatever you want to me,” he babbled. “Ish it good? Am I good? I want it, I wan’ it, please, ah - ahh - _AAAHH!_ ”

“Shh, you’re alright.”

“Don’t stop, don’t stop, _don’t shtooop…!”_

“Come, Newton,” Hermann said. “Come for me. There now… you’re doing wonderfully.”

A warm, weak trickle of semen spurted across Hermann’s stomach and dripped onto the bed. Newt went slack on top of him, his body clammy with sweat and half of his face soaked with drool and snot and tears. He lifted his head and said in a small, broken voice: “I did it.”

“Oh, you sweet thing,” Hermann breathed, cupping Newt’s messy face and kissing his tear-stained cheeks. “You did so well. You’re so good, Newton.” He squeezed Newt’s buttocks and pushed him down while raising his hips so that his dick was sheathed totally inside of him. “You feel so good,” he said.

Newt, still limp as a rag-doll and vulnerable, made no sign of having heard what Hermann said, save for a slight twitch of his fingers at Hermann’s jaw. His pupils were as black as space and blown so wide that the blue of his eyes looked like the bright ring surrounding an eclipse. His eyelids were heavy. One of them, the left one, covering the eye that was still pink with blood, drooped a little lower than the right.

“Let me lay you down,” Hermann said.

Newt let Hermann turn him over. He was delirious, tears still flowing freely down his face, but took his weight on his knees as Hermann moved him, and used his elbow to lower himself, shaking, onto the mattress. He sniffed and wiped his nose gracelessly on the back of his arm, smearing a glistening snail trail of snot across one cheek. Hermann wiped it away fondly with palm of his hand, which he dried on the sheet underneath. Drawing closer, he coaxed Newt’s thighs apart and pushed his dick back inside. His hole was loose, and offered no resistance as Hermann began to thrust into him with all the grace of a desperate teenager. He’d ache tomorrow, fumble for his extra-strong painkillers and wince at the first difficult steps away from his desk after a long few hours poring over paperwork. But Newt would ache too, throw an arm around his shoulders and crack a joke about what terrible shape they were both in. Or maybe he’d mask his pain with bravado, refuse to compromise his pride by fetching a pillow to cushion his poor sore behind, talk too loudly and move too fast so that nobody would notice his limp or the way his voice cracked. His body would be a sweet, shameful secret hidden under skinny jeans and a stained shirt, tender and prime for molding and tweaking and taking apart - sore nipples, buttocks bruised purple, asshole pink and puffy and desperate to be spread and sucked and fucked gently with fingers until he was clinging to Hermann and crying with pleasure and pain.

“Spread your legs, spread them wider,” Hermann gasped. He dug his fingers into Newt’s thighs, holding him open as he fucked him, raking in the delicious sight of him laid flushed, naked and quivering with need, belly slick with his own seed, nipples poking out pink and hard. His hands were feverish with a need to touch him everywhere all at once, from his swollen lips to the pleasing mounds of pudge covering both hips that begged to be grabbed and kneaded and used to pull his buttocks back as he was fucked over Hermann’s desk with a strong hand on his nape. The desire was overwhelming, and he ended up craning over Newt, squeezing his chin in one hand and holding his lolling head in place as he kissed him furiously, tasting salt and tears, biting his tongue and sucking hard until Newt wailed against his mouth.

His eyes were glazed over, half-closed and shimmering with tears. His glasses had come unhooked on one side and were skewed across his face, bouncing up and down with every thrust. The head of Hermann’s dick was pounding against the back of Newt’s insides.

“You feel so good,” he said, “so good, I’m sorry, I can’t-”

Newt reached out blindly with a weak hand to graze the skin on Hermann’s chest. Hermann seized it and pinned it to the pillow above Newt’s head.

“You’re brilliant, Newton” he said. “I-I confess I - wanted you. After our disastrous first meeting I still… I had hoped you would write. I meant to… I wanted to tell you so many things. Eventually I convinced myself it would be better for both of us if I didn’t. It was easier to be angry. But I wanted… I wanted to see you. It has always been you, Newton. There has never been anybody but you.”

“I love you,” Newt wept.

Hermann came hard, eyes squeezed shut and veins straining in his neck as he pressed his sweaty forehead against Newt’s, groping his chest gracelessly with one hand. He rocked into Newt as the shock and heat of his orgasm, his first with another person in what seemed like an impossibly long time, washed over him, emptying every drop deep inside Newton. A gush of semen erupted out of him as Hermann pulled out. The feeling of being suddenly empty made Newt wail and frantically reach down to fill himself with three fingers. Had Hermann been a younger man, it would have been enough to make him want to stroke himself hard and plunge into him again, pumping him so full he wouldn’t be able to stop it pouring out of him, soaking his hands and the sheet underneath him and leaving him filthy and used and drowning in bliss. Instead, he reached down and stroked his fingers along the curve of Newt’s ass, scooping up the trail of come with his fingers and pushing it back inside him as he replaced Newt’s fingers with his own.

“You’re insatiable,” he said.

Newt whined and nodded in agreement. His chest was shiny with sweat and heaving up and down and his glasses had steamed up. “Of all the times I’ve nearly died…. in the past seventy-two hours... that was... the _besht_. The best,” he panted. “Oh fuck. I’m still shaking.”

The tips of Hermann’s ears burned. “That’s quite enough of that,” he said. “Newton!”

“Huh?” A fresh, wet ring of blood had formed around his left nostril. Hermann grabbed a clean tissue from the bedside table with his free hand and dabbed at him with it, making him squirm. “Ugh _,_ leave me alone.” He wiped his nose on his hand and looked at it. “You _literally_ fucked my brains out.”

A muscle twitched in Hermann’s cheek and he shot Newt a withering look and began to pull his fingers out of him.

“Don’t!” Newt said. “It’s sensitive. Slowly… That’s it.”

They were both fully sober now, and as Hermann removed his wet fingers from Newt’s fucked-out hole and they both laid naked and vulnerable on Newt’s springy mattress in the dim yellow light of his bedside reading lamp, a shared sense of trepidation and the knowledge that things could never go back to the way they were sank heavily into both of their stomachs. Newt turned stiff and uncomfortable in Hermann’s arms, and Hermann felt his own body go rigid in response. He awkwardly unhinged his limbs and shuffled to the very edge of the bed.

“Don’t,” he began. “You don’t have to be embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed. Why would I be embarrassed?”

Newt had turned onto his side, back to Hermann, and was hugging himself with both arms. Hermann watched his stubby fingernails drumming soundlessly on his side.

“Did you take your pills today?” Hermann asked, with as much dignity as he could muster with his bare backside half hanging off the side of the bed.

“Hmm.”

“Newton.”

“Are you really doing this after fucking me within an inch of my life? No, I didn’t take them.”

“I think perhaps you should.”

“Fine. Don’t touch me.”

Newt sat up and swung his legs off the side of the bed. His thighs were still trembling. He stood up, took a step and crumbled under his own weight, staggering into a chest of drawers and knocking piles of biology catalogues, trading cards and a half-empty glass of stale water onto the floor.

“ _Shit.”_

“I’ll help you.”

“You can’t even stand right now,” Newt snapped. His voice was thick with his tongue that Hermann had bitten. He limped into the bathroom and fumbled around in the cupboard behind the mirror before emerging with a plastic packet of pills sealed with foil. He popped one and put it in his mouth without taking any water. The single missing pink and white capsule left a dent in the otherwise smooth foil.

“When did you last take those?” Hermann asked.

Newt walked back into the bathroom. Hermann heard him putting the pills away.

“Newton.”

“Two weeks ago,” he said, adding petulantly, “It’s none of your business.”

“I think it is my business, considering what just happened between us.”

“ _Fuck_ , Hermann! As much as I’d _love_ to listen to whatever rousing speech you’ve got planned about how I have a great responsibility to keep on top of it, I really don’t feel like being lectured right now! So just drop it, OK?”

“You _do_ have a responsibility! Not just to yourself.” It was the wrong thing to say and Herman was aware of it. Newton always had something bubbling just below the surface, brilliant mind fizzing and popping with sparks and outlandish ideas. Some of his best work had been conceived in rainbow-coloured notes scribbled in a haze on the top of his desk, or on his arms and thighs ready for him to discover later in the shower. He was forever chasing the chaos and productivity of a manic episode with one hand while pushing it away with the other, diligently popping mood stabilisers each day with his morning cup of sugary coffee before starting to conceal them under his tongue to spit into a crumpled tissue five minutes later.

He had an ugly second degree burn now hidden by Yamarashi’s gruesome maw from the time he had thrust his naked arm over the light of a Bunsen burner, so wildly enamoured with his own genius after a breakthrough he became convinced it could not hurt him, and the remains of a fractured wrist from when he had tried to instigate a fist fight with a seven-foot-tall armed ranger because he wouldn’t let him onto the Shatterdome roof while clad in nothing but his underwear.

“Do you think I’m crazy right now?” he said, shakily. “Do you think that’s why I slept with you?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Hermann replied. “You should swallow your pill.”

“I made a Pons out of solder and scrap and _it worked._ I _drifted_ with a _kaiju,_ something no one else has done before, probably never will again. No one else is ever going to know what we went through. I did that! _Me!_ I’m a hero!”

“Swallow your pill, Dr Geiszler.”

“I did swallow it!” Newt yelled, then shuddered and collapsed against the bathroom door, knees buckling beneath him. A wet glob of Hermann’s come spurted out of him before he could stop it and trickled down his inner thigh. His face flooded with heat. “I must be crazy,” he said. “I let you do this to me.”

“Oh please. You’re the one who kissed me.”

“You kissed me back!”

“I didn’t start this.”

“You had your hands all over me!”

“You _begged_ me to fuck you.”

Whatever Newt meant to shout back at him died on his lips. He covered himself with his hands and cowered behind the bathroom door, feeling every inch of his nakedness. Hermann shifted on the bed and pulled a corner of the duvet over his bottom half.

“You know I didn’t mean that,” he said.

He watched Newt’s shadow, cast across the floor by the fluorescent white lights of the bathroom, duck its head and retreat further away.

“Newton,” he said. “Really, now.”

He heard the tap run and the sound of Newt gulping water from a glass. He emerged from the bathroom with the half-full glass in his hand, which he held out to Hermann.

“Here,” he said, not looking at him.

“Thank you.”

Newt sat down on the bed with his hands folded in his lap.

“Are you staying?” he asked.

“If you would like me to make myself scarce I’ll have to ask for your assistance.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No, just exhausted. It’s been a while since I... exerted myself.”

Hermann took another long sip of water, though he wasn’t thirsty any more.

“So there’s never been anybody but me, huh?” Newt said.

Hermann had the good grace to look embarrassed.

“People say all sorts of things during the throes of passion.”

“Things they don’t mean, you mean.”

“Oh come now.”

“Don’t you ‘come now’ me!”

“You didn’t seem to mind five minutes ago.”

Newt seemed to have trouble deciding his preliminary feelings about the quip. He eventually settled on being grudgingly impressed. He leaned back on his hands.

“Why did we wait so long, Hermann?” he asked. “All these years.”

“I… I don’t know.”

“This is always how it was gonna go, huh? Me and you at the end of the world.”

“Except the world isn’t ending,” Hermann said. “Which means we will have to process all of this.”

“Process it,” Newt repeated with a wry smile. “Compartmentalise it, file it away with all your other inconvenient emotions like you always do.”

“We can’t pretend - _I_ can’t pretend that this never happened.”

“Can’t we? I thought you’d want to. You know, like the last time, and the time before that.”

“Don’t drag that up.”

“No, let’s drag it up. Let’s get it all out there,” Newt said, spreading his arms as if he was laying out every sordid detail of their long and complicated history. “You’re the one who wants to talk about it, let’s talk about it. Because I just think it’s _funny-”_

“Why are you doing this?”

“It’s funny that you apparently wanted me so much and then the first time we met you called me pathetic and said I was delusional."

“You and I remember that day very differently. From what I recall _you_ were the one who stormed out -”

“ _After_ you said-”

“-and you were the one who told me-”

“-we shouldn’t talk anymore-”

“-never to contact you again.”

“You didn’t even put up a fight for me!”

“I don’t remember you making the effort!”

Hermann was horribly aware that everything was very quickly spiralling out of control. Newt had leapt to his feet, was gesticulating frantically and stopping and starting in different directions. His thighs were still shaking from the sex. Hermann wanted to lay him down, wrap him in the duvet and curl up with his lips against his neck and fall into a deep sleep, so that he had even half a chance of being at all productive the next day.

“All this time you let me think you hated me,” Newt said. “How could you do that to me? Were you ashamed? Couldn’t risk anyone finding out Dr Gottlieb with his starched collars and alphabetised collection of pop rock legends from the 1960s onwards - including the complete studio albums of Paramore, yes, we all know! - wanted _this.”_

“What I choose to listen to in my private time is none of your business!”

“I could hear it blasting through your earphones.”

“You infuriating man. I really cannot stand you.”

“You’re so repressed it’s not even funny. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There was such a lot I wanted to say.”

“But you never did.”

Hermann pinched the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

“You didn’t want to embarrass _yourself._ ”

“What was I supposed to say? Please Newton, enlighten me!”

“That you loved me too!” Newt yelled.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Hermann said, helplessly.

“You’re a coward.”

“ _You_ were the cowardly one. You called me in the dead of night, drunk, _crying_. You said-”

“Don’t say it.”

“You said you still loved me. _Still_ loved me. That you never knew how much you could love another person before you met me. What was I supposed to do? Dear God Newton, you weren’t _well._ ”

“I knew what I was saying.”

“You frightened me! When you didn’t come to work the next day I thought…”

“You thought what?” Newt shouted, dashing in all directions in a small space in the middle of the carpet. Hermann had a terrible vision of someone suddenly storming in and seeing him, naked and enraged, with bite marks on his nipples and hand-shaped bruises on his hips and thighs as Hermann sat in his bed with messed-up hair and love bites on his neck. “What did you think, that I’d _hurt myself?_ I’m so sick of everyone thinking I’m - what was it you said, Hermann? ‘A danger to myself and others’.”

“They had you sectioned for a week. I had no idea what you’d done. You never told me!”

“You never asked.”

“That’s not fair, Newton,” Hermann said. “You’re not being fair.”

“I was so ready for you to tell me I’d got it wrong. Whatever I thought we had, it was over, and I had to deal with that. I could have dealt with that. But you just sat down at your desk with the chalk on your clothes and you - you didn’t even look at me.”

“Whatever you _thought_ we had, Dr Geiszler?” Hermann snapped. “What, pray tell, did you _think_ we had?”

A fleeting look of sorrow swept across Newt’s face and left as quickly as it had appeared. He knew Hermann too well to be surprised. Somehow the disappointment was worse, and made Hermann feel defensive and inclined to protect himself with the same detached formality the Gottlieb family always regarded one another with when things became tense. It was a skill that did not come naturally to Hermann, rather he had cultivated it. He was considered, quite disparagingly, to be overly emotional by his family. As a baby he had cried inconsolably in his crib for hours. During telephone conversations with his mother, when she told him his father sent his love and Hermann refused to offer his own in return, she would sometimes say in desperation that he had been born bad.

“All this time,” Newt said, “even now, you want to pretend there was never anything between us.”

“ _Nothing_ _happened._ We never had a relationship. There was no confession, no declaration of shared emotions. We never even kissed.”

“You knew how I felt about you.”

“I admit I allowed our correspondence to become less than professional.”

“We both wanted more than what we had.”

“And then you met me, and I’m sorry I was obviously such a horrendous disappointment to you! We weren’t compatible.”

“We were more than compatible!” Newt shrieked. “We’re _drift compatible_ , _baby!”_

“Why, then, did you never speak to me again? Three years, and not a letter, not an email, not a single word!”

“I tried!” Newt flung out his hands. “I wrote to you - three times! - I wrote to you and every time they got sent back to me. When I called TU in Berlin they told me you’d moved on. I left messages, I _waited_ and _waited_ , and I felt so stupid for ever having thought…”

The revelation should have affected him greatly, however Hermann, who always strove to suppress powerful emotions and had been known to cut off a conversation mid-sentence and depart should he feel them rousing in him, opted to process the new information rationally. A green light flashing on an answer machine was easy to glimpse from over the rim of a dobsonian telescope and then forget about as he drowned himself in work until 24 hours later, by which time the message had been automatically wiped from the system. There was always a code to debug, a network meta-analysis to report. Many times he had opened a blank email or penned a draft using ridiculous words like ‘affection’ and ‘yearning’ and things he had read in romantic poetry by Bronte and Keats when he still half believed in that sort of thing, only to quickly cast it aside. His interest in Newton’s life, his accomplishments, his disastrous TV interviews in which he was so thoroughly derided by his white-coated peers he often descended into screeches, was purely professional. He was, as ever, economical with his emotions. He did not think about foolish things.

Standing in front of him, Newt opened his arms, making a show of his nakedness, the dried come on his stomach and thighs and the tear stains on his face.

“Here I am again,” he said, laughing bitterly. “Newt the loser, making a fool of himself. Because you don’t know how to love anyone. You don’t know how to love anyone because nobody ever loved you!”

The words struck Hermann like a dagger to the gut. Worse was the pain that spiked across the echoes of the drift that lingered between them, turning Newt’s eyes wild with glee at having hurt him. Slowly, Hermann shuffled off the bed and stood as straight as he could, setting his quivering jaw. The ache in his arms and legs had penetrated deep into his bones and there was little chance of him rising before noon tomorrow. Newt watched him as he pulled on his crumpled trousers, buttoned his shirt up from the bottom, folded his jacket over one arm and picked up his shoes with his socks scrunched inside.

“Walk away, Hermann, that’s all you ever do!” he shouted as Hermann hobbled barefoot towards the door. “The truth hurts so you don’t want to hear it!”

“You’ve no right,” Hermann spat. “You’ve no right bringing my family into this.”

Newt stormed off across the room. There was a power imbalance that came with being clothed while Newt remained bare, and Hermann thought about telling him to gather up his own garments that had been strewn about, as Newt clearly had no intention of doing so on his own. His soft dick looked small and vulnerable, like the rest of him.

“What was all this?” Hermann demanded.

“What was what?”

“ _This!”_ Hermann gestured at the empty space between them. “Us! Are you punishing me? Is that why you brought me here - because I didn’t reciprocate your advances?”

“No. Fuck no! What the hell, Hermann?”

“Was this your revenge? I’ve seen some hare-brained schemes from you, Dr Geiszler, but _this!_ Is there no limit to your - your _self destruction_ that you would go this far -”

“Stop it.”

“- because you’re angry at me for something that _I didn’t do?”_

“You don’t love me. You had no right fucking me when you don’t love me. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

“You don’t know _how_ to be loved!” Hermann shot back. “It’s so easy for you to stand there and blame me when you’ve always tried your damnedest to make yourself as unloveable as possible. You have sabotaged every attempt! You _needed_ me to reject you because you’re too scared to admit you wouldn’t have been able to-”

“ _SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!_ ” Newt screamed, clamping his hands over his ears, skewing his glasses sideways. “I wish I never met you!”

“I assure you that feeling is mutual!”

Hermann threw his cane at Newt. It landed with a dull thump in front of him. They both looked down at it, then silently back up at each other. Somewhere far away, somebody had started to play music on an old stereo.

 

_When I fall in love_

_It will be forever_

_Or I’ll never fall in love_

_In a restless world like this is_

_Love is ended before it’s begun_

_And too many moonlight kisses_

_Seem to cool in the warmth of the sun._

 

Newt bit his lower lip to stop it trembling.

“Hermann and Newt, huh?” he said. “Same as always.”

“Same as always,” Hermann repeated quietly.

Newt picked up his cane, walked over to where Hermann had placed a hand on Newt’s desk to balance himself, and handed it to him.

“Thank you,” he said. He turned it over in his hands before returning it to its familiar place at his side, anchoring his aching body to the floor. He fastened his top button and gave a gentlemanly nod that clashed with Newt’s own brazen lack of attire. “I - thank you for a pleasant evening.”

Newt’s brow furrowed. “Thank you?” he said incredulously. His shoulders began to shake. Hermann opened and closed his mouth three times, fumbling for something to say, until Newton stopped laughing and looked at him with tears glinting at the corners of his eyes and a smile on his lips. It was a smile that Hermann would cherish and hold tightly in the corners of his mind on the nights he was ripped from sleep by conjurations of kaiju blue and the choke of a rubbery cord wrapped around his neck. He would learn better than to ask for more.

“I missed you so much, you know,” Newt said. “Even when you were standing on the other side of the room.”

“You should have known better than to set your heart on someone like me, Dr Geiszler. I have always disappointed those who care about me.”

“You know me, Hermann. I never learn my lesson,” Newt said. “I could never let you go.”

“You never had to.” Hermann walked over to the door and unlocked it. The fluorescent light bulbs that lined the ceiling of the hallway outside flickered on as the door cracked open, casting a bright line of light across the floor. The tender music that somebody had started playing far away grew louder, and had changed into something in a language Hermann didn’t understand. “I really couldn’t wait to meet you, Newton.”

“I hate that you’re making me ask you to stay,” Newt said, half of his face illuminated in the cold, white light.

“I didn’t think everything would fall apart so quickly.”

“You didn’t think about a lot of things.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Nothing. I just want you.”

“You have me. You’ve always had me,” Hermann said. “I’ve always been yours.”

“It’s too late. Don’t you see? We could have had something together, a long time ago. Another place, somewhere far away from here, and everyone, and everything. We could have lived together. We could’ve slept together. I would’ve made you breakfast.”

“A make a terrible mess, no doubt,” Hermann said, smiling softly.

“ _And_ the best blueberry pancakes you’ve ever tasted.”

“I would have liked that.”

“Me too. But now you know me. We know each other. This is the best we could ever hope for. Me and you, here, right now, this room, this bed. You fucking me. Half the people we ever knew are dead. We’re both too broken to ever pick up the pieces between us. And here we are.” Newt started to cry.

“There’s no need for that.”

“Fuck you.”

“Come here.”

“Don’t wanna.”

“Come _here.”_

Newt shuffled over and nudged his forehead against Hermann’s chest. He struggled a little in his arms just for show before settling against him.

Hermann dropped his shoes and jacket on the floor.

“You’re shivering,” he admonished, rubbing Newt's body with his cold hands.

Newt stroked the crinkles at the edges of his eyes and laid his palm on the side of his neck, where his skin was still slightly clammy. “Sorry I drooled all over you.”

“That’s alright. I know I asked a lot of you.”

“I always do this. I destroy everything.”

“You haven’t destroyed anything. Look at me.” He cupped Newt’s face in his hands. “Despite everything, we are still alive. We can fix this.”

“You always wanted to fix everything,” Newt said. “But you can’t fix me, Hermann. We can’t fix each other. We’ve wasted all this time.” He sighed against Hermann’s shoulder. “I wish I could feel things like normal people.”

“I liked that you felt everything deeply. You burned so much brighter than everybody else.”

“Everything I touch gets burned.”

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” Hermann said. “Drama queen.” Not quite joking, he added, “We could always try again in another ten years.”

“You’ll go grey.”

“You might first.”

“I’m gonna be young forever.”

“I feel older than I’ve ever been. I wake up and everything hurts. Some days I fear I will… b-become a burden.”

“Not to me. I’d take care of you.”

“I can’t imagine my life without you,” Hermann said, astounding himself with his own honesty. “I’ve grown so used to you.”

He began to stroke Newt’s cheek with his thumb, tracing each sandy freckle.

“I never do this,” Newt said, quietly. “Cuddle after sex, I mean.”

“If you’d prefer not to…”

“I’m fine with it. It’s cool. Nobody ever wanted to before, s’all.” He settled himself deeper under Hermann’s arm, sniffed and wiped his cheeks and nose on his shirt. “I like it,” he said, then added in a whisper, as Hermann’s thumb stilled on his cheek, “don’t stop.”

Hermann stroked him again. After a while, he took hold of Newt’s chin between his

thumb and forefinger and tilted his head up. “Open your mouth,” he said.

Newt opened it and lifted his tongue. “Good boy,” Hermann said.

“My ass hurts.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK. It’s a good hurt.”

“For whatever it’s worth,” Hermann said, “I think you were exceptional.”

 _“Exceptional_ ,” Newt mimicked. “You’re such a dork. I knew you’d be good in bed.

I wanna suck your dick next time. I’m gonna blow your big beautiful mind.”

A regretful silence seeped into the room and threaded around them, as fragile as glass. They both knew there would be no next time. Hermann would return to his tyrant of a father and mother, his older siblings who were his comrades one day and tormentors the next, and the younger brother whom he had terrorized in turn, and Newton would reunite with the father he had not seen in five years and the mother whose famous bluish-green eyes he had inherited, perhaps, or travel abroad, or write a book.

With Newton in his arms, it occurred to Hermann that he had never told his family about his sexual inclinations, though he suspected they knew and had for some time. His mother called him a ‘confirmed bachelor’ with a bitten tongue that suggested some knowledge of the implication. His father had gone further, slipping it into conversation like a politician might mention a rival’s moral indiscretion. When quizzed on his defection from the Jaeger Program and his shameful spawn’s expressed disregard for the Wall of Life by a journalist from a science magazine, he explained how the Jaeger Program was no longer viable, that it had served its purpose and should be retired rather than hijacked by a lunatic fringe, adding cryptically: “My son is a homosexual, you know.”

“Lay down with me,” Newt said.

Hermann kissed him hard.

“Woah! Not an invitation for round two, big guy.”

“I don’t think I could if I tried.”

“Me either.” He helped Hermann settle back down on the mattress and laid down next to him with a broken spring poking into his side. Hermann pulled him closer until he was nearly lying on top of him.

“Now I know I’m crushing you,” he said. “What’re you thinking about?”

“I was thinking about being a homosexual.”

Newt laughed, still red-eyed and sniffling. “What, have you changed your mind? Was it that bad?”

“No. I just never told anyone, that’s all.”

“You could tell me. I’m your oldest friend.”

“You mean you’re my only friend. Good Lord, how did that happen?”

“It’s my winning personality,” Newt said. “And our sizzling sexual chemistry, obviously.”

“That must be it,” said Herman acidly. With some difficulty he wriggled a corner of thin duvet out from underneath them and pulled it over Newton’s back. “Honestly, you’ll catch your death.”

“Your jizz is leaking out of me.”

“Would you like me to help you wash?”

“No. Wanna keep it in me.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“It’s _romantic,_ asshole.” Newt wrapped both arms around Hermann’s narrow body. “Just let me rest like this,” he said.

Flipping through the pages of a half-imagined thesis penned in the corners of his mind, Hermann reminded himself of an old high school hypothesis. _Some romances aren’t supposed to last,_ he thought, _some men are meant to be alone._ Whatever sort of love he had been born with had sat like a seed inside of him for too long, never allowed to bloom too bright for too long, and he didn’t know how to give it any more than Newt knew how to accept it if he tried.

They would fall asleep together, tangled in each others’ limbs, with Newt’s arm going numb under Hermann’s body. Hermann would wake first the next day, smooth out his clothes and silently creep outside, knowing that Newton was only pretending to be asleep as he laid with his back to the door. They would avoid each other for several days.

“I care for you,” Hermann whispered. “Very deeply, Newton.”

“I know,” Newt said.

“I’ve never known anyone like you.”

“I’m glad we did this. All of it.”

We did it all backwards, Hermann thought, though with all his wild imagination he could not envision their coming together any other way.

“We’ll be alright,” he said, because he had to believe it.

Newt had already fallen asleep on his shoulder. The digital alarm clock at the side of the bed read twenty-two-minutes-past-midnight. The forlorn song that had played on a staticky stereo far away had stopped. Hermann reached over and turned off the lamp at the side of the bed, and realised too late that he had left the door slightly ajar. He settled down anyway. White light crept through the crack in the door and covered them both in a dim glow that shone around the edges of where they laid together, until the long lights in the corridor outside flickered off again in the quiet, temporary stillness.

 

* * *

 

_Dr Newton Geiszler_

_Biological Science Department_

_Shao Industries_

_Beijing_

 

_Dear Newton,_

_It has been three months since your departure from the Hong Kong Shatterdome and in the weeks that followed I found myself woefully unequipped to deal with recent developments. It would appear your prediction that the place would be re-purposed as some sort of military operation was on the money, despite my objections. I believed my skills would be put to greater use elsewhere, and so I write to you now from Bavaria in the room I penned my very first letter to you as I contemplate my next venture. I have received invitations from a number of universities. I have yet to accept any._

_The day you left, I thought about what I might do to make you stay. Some grand, romantic gesture that would have stopped you walking out of that place, leaving behind half your clothes and that awful collection of kaiju figurines you prized so much. But I was never one for grand gestures. I sat in the laboratory we shared and crafted another C++ code for solving quadratic equations while you boarded the helicopter and disappeared from my life. It seems we have form for leaving one another angry._

_I believed, with time, that I would come to regret what transpired between us that night. But I cannot. Some days it seems my life is a long and diverse sequence of regrets in which you are the only constant. I don’t regret you, Newton. I hope you do not regret me._

_Don’t think I am unaware of the fact that two of my previous letters than have gone unanswered. I do not presume to know why you are ignoring me; whether it is anger, indifference or payback for my own actions so many years ago. Perhaps it is nothing less than I deserve. But I haven’t resigned myself to the idea that the best thing in my life has passed me by. For thirty-six years I believed my inescapable hope in the face of hopelessness was a vice; now I find myself warming up to the idea that ‘Hope and passion are not the antithesis to logic and intelligence. Chemistry, biology, physics and geology are as artistic and beautiful as any oil painting or symphony.’ (Geizsler, 2007 - do NOT laugh). So I sit here at the desk where I once pored over every word you penned in that atrocious handwriting of yours, and write you this letter as if I am twenty-five again, consumed with thoughts that make me feel tentative and excited and ashamed._

_I am working on the shame._

_If you choose not to reply, I will take the hint and cease my attempts at communication with you. Should this be the case, truly, Newton, I wish you the very best. After all that has happened you deserve a good life, and if that is a life without me, that is something I must accept._

_I hope you will write to me. I would like to see you again._

_Yours,_

_Hermann Gottlieb_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading this small monster of a one-shot that was first spawned by the idea of Hermann being insanely turned-on by his dick not comfortably fitting fully inside Newt's tiny hole.
> 
> I was nervous about posting this, so if you have the time please leave a comment - it would mean the world to me.


End file.
